The Sellable Hours Count: a one-page auto repair capacity worksheet

The sellable hours count is one calculation, done every Monday on one sheet, in the same order as the video:

1. Techs times attended hours. Count each technician's real hours in the building next week, after training and time off.
2. Times productivity. Multiply by the share of attended hours that actually reaches a repair order.
3. Minus what's already on the board. Subtract carryover, approved work waiting on a part, and a reserve for drop-ins.

What's left is what you can sell. Compare it with the hours already booked before you add another job. Below are the formula, the Monday sheet, a worked example and the judgment calls that stay with you.

Who this is for

Owners, service managers and advisors who book by open slots and keep finding a full lot with cars waiting, or idle techs on a day that looked full. You need your techs' schedules for next week, last month's productivity from your shop system, and fifteen minutes on Monday morning. No new software.

The formula

One service reference defines capacity as technicians multiplied by attended hours multiplied by productivity. Attended hours are contracted hours minus holiday, training and known absence. Productivity is the share of attended hours that gets recorded against a repair order. Managers and advisors aren't counted, and an apprentice counts as the fraction of a technician they can produce.

The point is to plan on hours, not slots. A two-hour brake job and a six-hour diagnosis both take one slot on many calendars.

Three words that get mixed up

Before you put a productivity number on the sheet, make sure it's the right one. Ratchet+Wrench defines productivity as hours worked divided by hours available, and efficiency as flat-rate hours produced divided by actual hours worked. FenderBender adds utilization in a body shop example: 32 hours on vehicles out of 40 attended is 80% utilization. That's a body shop with its own units, so don't carry its percentages to a general repair shop. For booking, use the number that tells you how much of the attended day reaches a repair order, and use your own shop system's figure.

The Monday sheet

Copy this onto one page or a spreadsheet tab.

Line	Your number
A. Technicians (count apprentices as a fraction)
B. Attended hours per tech next week, after time off and training
C. Theoretical hours (A × B)
D. Last month's productivity, from your shop system
E. Real hours (C × D)
F. Carryover from last week
G. Approved work waiting on parts
H. Reserve for drop-ins and add-on findings
I. Sellable hours (E − F − G − H)
J. Hours already booked for next week
K. Room left (I − J)

If K is negative, you're already overbooked. If it's large, you have room to sell, and the advisors should know the number.

A worked example

Here is an illustration with made-up numbers, using the VentaVid capacity formula. Four technicians, eight attended hours a day and five days a week give 160 theoretical hours. At 85% productivity, the hours you can really sell come to 136. Leave out the productivity line and you'd promise 24 hours you don't have.

Now subtract what's already on the board. Say carryover is 18 hours and you hold 12 hours for drop-ins. That leaves 106 sellable hours. If 98 are already booked, there's room for about 8 more, which is one decent job, not three.

What the surveys say about the gap

The gap between attended and productive hours is common. In the 2021 Ratchet+Wrench survey, roughly two-thirds of respondents had technician productivity below 90%. An older consultant piece in the same publication uses 90% productivity as a starting benchmark, where an 8-hour day means about 7.2 hours on cars. Treat those as old reference points for a conversation, not targets. Your own number from last month is the one to plan on.

Judgment calls that stay with you

• Who can do what. A specialist with one free hour can't take a four-hour electrical job, whatever the total says. Check the hours for the skill as well as the shop.
• How big the reserve is. It depends on your customers and the season. Start with a guess and adjust from what actually walked in.
• Saying no, or offering a later date. A person tells the customer, in plain words.
• Whether a job is worth the hours. Tekmetric highlights effective labor rate, the actual dollars collected per labor hour after discounts, flat-rate work and packaged pricing. Hours filled at a low effective rate are still hours gone.

How to run it for a month

1. Fill in the sheet every Monday before the first appointment.
2. Post line K where the advisors book.
3. On Friday, compare what you planned with what happened: actual hours produced, carryover, drop-ins.
4. Adjust the reserve and the productivity line from what you saw.

The first week will be wrong. That's useful, because it shows which input you guessed.

How to tell it worked

After a month, look for three things: fewer cars carried over from one week to the next, fewer days where advisors promised a time the shop couldn't meet, and fewer idle hours on days that looked full. If carryover keeps growing, your sellable hours are lower than the sheet says, so lower the productivity line or the reserve until the week fits.

The longer explanation is on auto repair capacity planning software. For the tech side of the same question, see technician scheduling AI. RevvOS's daily operations view shows delayed parts next to the schedule they affect.